Help with hard drive

[johnshaw1917]

Hi everyone! I have a 500 gig Seagate HD, whose drive motor has stopped working, so that it no longer spins like it should. My question is this. Is it possible to get the data stored on the HD from it, before I destroy it? Because the HD doesn't spin, I can't boot the OS, which is on another HD. Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks, John

[Redy]

ok!.. wht happend with this H.D.D?

[johnshaw1917]

ok!.. wht happend with this H.D.D?

HDD motor has a mechanical problem and it doesn't rotate like it should. I can't boot windows as long as its plugged into the system, because XP goes directly to a disk check and stalls out. What I'd like to do is get the data off the faulty HDD before I destroy, if possible.

[Redy]

you can read from it?, i mean wht about a recovery software?

[johnshaw1917]

you can read from it?, i mean wht about a recovery software?

Yes, I am looking for a bootable recovery software, that will allow me to read the data from the HDD. I don't believe the data is corrupt, but since the HDD mechanics aren't working, I can't retrieve it in the normal way.

[hellnoire]

Yes, I am looking for a bootable recovery software, that will allow me to read the data from the HDD. I don't believe the data is corrupt, but since the HDD mechanics aren't working, I can't retrieve it in the normal way.

This is a tricky one.

You can try a Linux LIVE CD... but even then, I can't assure it would work.

[johnshaw1917]

This is a tricky one.

You can try a Linux LIVE CD... but even then, I can't assure it would work.

Thanks hellnoire. I do have a Ubuntu 9.04 Live CD, but am unsure how I would use it to retrieve the data, that is if it's possible. Would you mind going into a bit more detail on how to do it?

Thanks, John

[hellnoire]

I can indeed.

Boot to the LiveCD, by selecting it to start up without installing anything. Once it's finished booting, go to Places, then if your hard drive still works, it should be under there.

If you can open and mount it, plug in either an external USB stick or hard drive to copy it all to. Heck, if you can, copy it to a different computer.

[johnshaw1917]

I can indeed.

Boot to the LiveCD, by selecting it to start up without installing anything. Once it's finished booting, go to Places, then if your hard drive still works, it should be under there.

If you can open and mount it, plug in either an external USB stick or hard drive to copy it all to. Heck, if you can, copy it to a different computer.

Thanks for the tip hellnoire. All the folders are there intact, but unfortunately I couldn't mount the HDD and retrieve them. I had most of the folders backed up on another HDD, but there was one folder that contained some older C drive images that wasn't. It isn't worth sending the HDD into have repaired, so I will just destroy it.

Thanks again for your help!
John

[Raymond]

If the hard drive isn't spinning, meaning it can't read the sectors on the drive and data recovery software wouldn't work.

If you want to get back to the data, your only chance is to fix the spinning problem, get back your data and then throw the disk into the dustbin since it wouldn't last long anyway.